III
Still, our hope in a further life is only a hope and not a demonstrable certainty. Yet perhaps it is a well-grounded assurance, resting first of all on the fact that capacities and powers are placed in men for whose complete development human life is too short, and which would therefore be pointless if they did not attain to a further evolution. This is particularly manifest in the case of all men who die young.
Again, we have the very definite testimony of Christ, whose whole conception of life would otherwise rest upon a huge error. The resurrection of the personality is one of the most indubitable and the most definite promises of Christianity, and without it Christianity would have a very dubious amount of truth and a very doubtful value for life; no “resurrection of the body,” of course, in the literal sense of the Christian confession of faith, as many conceive it, but in the sense in which Christ, and Paul too on occasion, announced it and in which alone it can satisfy us also. For though we do not wish to lose our individuality, nor rise again, as Job rightly says, as “a stranger to ourselves” (in which case there is no continuation of our life and the whole question no longer has any meaning), yet we shall surely not desire to live on with all “the weaknesses of the flesh”; and under any circumstances there is need of a thorough transformation, laying deep hold upon the whole nature of man, a transformation for which the Catholic church, indeed, assumes a special preparatory stage.
The details of this transformed continued life we do not know at all; nor do we know, in particular, how far those who are in that life have any consciousness of their former condition (as, indeed, logically belongs to a continued life, else it is none), nor how far they are in a position to maintain a connection with their kinsmen here. Moreover, we could not apprehend it with our present organs of perception, even if it were to be disclosed to us. Likewise all descriptions of “eternal glory” (with which the fantasy of men has taken so much pleasure in busying itself), as well as the notion of an “everlasting rest” (which, with our present ideas of rest, we could not endure), are nothing further than fantasy, expressed in impossible, or at any rate in quite imperfect pictures. It is surely possible, we may hope, for the nature of the life to come to be, far beyond all human understanding, greater than all these pictures represent; but it will quite surely be intelligible only for those whose spiritual nature is suited for it and sufficiently purified from everything that tends to decay. That is, in other words, if there is a continued life for all, and if they who have lived for nullities and have not developed their capabilities toward the attainment of things eternal, do not sink into nothingness, then every one surely continues to live in the element to which he truly belongs.
Whether there is then an endless duration of this new state under all circumstances, or whether there are still many separate steps of life, as in our life, and a final purification for all men (the so-called “restoration of all things”)—these are questions that no one will ever be able to answer satisfactorily. Whether there is an eternal punishment of the wicked does not seem to be so very important—less important, at least, than the unending advance of the good; and whether the wicked believe this, or do not believe, it has no very real influence upon their conduct. The punishment of the resolutely wicked (which many do not see brought about, and so become easily dubious of the existence of divine justice in the world) is particularly this, that they are unable to become better even if in their better moments they wish to do so. They are obliged to remain slaves to their lower nature, and to lose their life without any results worth while and without the hope of an immortality which they could only fear. If that still seems to you to be no satisfactory compensation for the sorrows and deprivations of the good upon earth, then add this fact to the account, that evil men do not experience the love and fidelity of men, the best of all outward things the world has to offer, and without which all their other possessions might well appear worthless, even to him who has them in the greatest fulness. He who loves no one, and whom no one loves, is a poor, lonely man, though he may, in the common belief, be sitting in the lap of fortune. And things are so arranged that these unhappy men can not understand or value the love which perhaps is still tendered them, but must infallibly lose it again through their own folly. To the things of highest value in human existence, the nearness of God, an inward trust in the good ending of a brave life, and that love and fidelity which can not exist without reciprocal esteem,—to these the evil man never attains. The other things let him enjoy in uneasiness and in the continual fear of the envy and hate of thousands (if that can be called “enjoyment”), and do not begrudge him a happiness that, for much the greater part, exists only in the mistaken idea that others have of it. “Non ragionam di lor, ma guarda e passa,”—speak not of them, but look, and pass them by.
As far as concerns our present life and nature, what is necessary (and therefore conceivable) as a reason for our faith, is only this: that without faith (that is, a trust in the transcendental, in what we can not grasp with the senses), we can not carry out the purpose of life in its entirety, nor can we lift ourselves to that plane which, with this faith, lies in our power of attainment and therefore becomes our task; that, further, for the attainment of this plane we need a power of love which is stronger than that which rests on human affections, and which is also very likely the element that creates life and sustains it and that possesses the power to overcome death; and that finally neither this faith nor this love would endure in the face of the enormous obstacles which oppose them on every hand in our earthly existence, if it were not for the glad hope that “there remaineth a rest to the people of God.”